This is a megawad I am making as some kind of a Magnup Opus of my vanilla mapmaking. Some maps are very old creations of mine, retextured, with added details to make them look up to par, and refined gameplay, and some are brand new.

The style is semi-realistic on the base/earth maps, hell maps will be much more abstract. Since hell only comes after map20 some earlier maps contain "bits of hell" to make them more varied (MAP13 was created with this concept alone). Only Doom 1, 2 and some Final Doom textures are used. The difficulty is medium to hard-ish, non-pros can also hit the Ultra-Violence.

The theme is basically a recreation of Doom 2 with the player traveling from earth to hell, taking the path of most resistance :)

Limit removing port is probably necessary for a lot of complex areas. Freelook is also advised, but not necessary.

Played the first 3 levels, and really enjoyed them. Really ambient, dark feeling of a ruined earth. Good sky texture too. The mood reminded me a lot of 'ravenholm' from HL2.

Issues.
-On level 2, all the street pillars need to be widened, as the lamps sitting on them are wider than the pillars. So when you are walking at the 'river' level, you get blocked from pillars from above, which is annoying, especially when you are fighting hell knights and things and are trying to strafe along a wall that looks flat.

-Level 3. Is linedef 998 meant to be impassable? I think linedef 995 is supposed to be impassable.

Great stuff so far tho. Really enjoying the 'storyline' aspect too. The levels are tough without being insane.

I played first four maps. Really nice. Especially the first level was extremely climatic, I was a bit afraid to go outside. Next ones weren't so awesome for me, but still cool, for example that moment on map 4 when you're getting warped to hell with blood and faces (there's a little bug here, lines marking the pit where blood flows at the beginning are not hidden).

Heh, I myself was not sure about that music in the first place, now I'm getting pretty sure it was a bad idea.

The music is by no way final at this point anyway (a lot of maps just run on default music). I might even consider adding some custom music to it (possible candidates are James Paddock midis and Duke Nukem music).

Thanks for the feedback anyway. Hopefully next weekend I'll be able to release a bit more polished demo with maybe 1-2 new maps or something.

I found map04 very tough on ammo (I play each map on UV from pistol start). Sometimes I had to skip monsters and rush forward to find some ammo. And I even had to fight one hell knight with bare fists.

Linedef 2645 on Map 06 needs its front alignment set to (0, -16). This is for the sake of us ZDoomers, as Zdoom seems to handle oddly sized textures differently than either PrBoom or DoomBuilder. (Texture heights like 24 or 72 have a weird vertical tiling thing.)

Linedef 1777 on Map 06 is misaligned.
Linedef 2645 on Map 06 needs its front alignment set to (0, -16). This is for the sake of us ZDoomers, as Zdoom seems to handle oddly sized textures differently than either PrBoom or DoomBuilder. (Texture heights like 24 or 72 have a weird vertical tiling thing.)

I loved the fight to finish the first episode (Map 06). Very Doom 3. Very cool. And the fact that you get to see the arena a few times before you get to it, you just know something bad is gonna happen there.

Seriously, this is shaping up into one of the best wads I have played. I keep thinking, "Man, this is what Doom2 could have been." Doom2 was awesome, but really it was just a random collection of levels. This mapset has a storyline and a progression that you can really feel woven throughout the levels, and it is so much stronger for it.

Memfis said:I found map04 very tough on ammo (I play each map on UV from pistol start). Sometimes I had to skip monsters and rush forward to find some ammo. And I even had to fight one hell knight with bare fists.

I think I have seen that trick. BTW does it work with sector edges? As far as I can tell to avoid walls being lit it needs a tiny edge around the sector at least. And from my mapping experience a flat to bleed over correctly needs to surround the "illusio pit" (or reverse pit) from every direction.

IIRC I was able to go through the maps (at least most of them) with a pistol start, but yes, map14 has some issues, as you need to gather a shotgun from a SG guy from the toxic tunnel area (where you possibly take a lot of damage), and Hellknights just eat up your ammo. Usually I place a few shotgunners as kind of an "ammo buffer", so I might add a few to the start area as well (maybe even a secret SSG to keep ammo efficiency higher). It is hard to balance ammo with both keeping "twinked" and "non-twinked" play in mind.

@KiiiYiiiKiiiA:

Thanks.

MAP06 was remade with tribute areas that are reminiscent of E2M4, actually, but IMO it turned out to be one of the best maps. I've been thinking about making the entire plasmagun area optional, so you can skip right into the left area (as it was originally before I revisited this map) to reduce linearity.

I'll look into the alignment issues. I try to avoid tiling textures that don't have 128 height (out of vanilla principles), but I may have missed them.

Had a brief nosey through and I have to say the maps look great, I would say that the map 14 contains probably the best cityscape I've ever seen in a doom pwad, it's seriously that good. The gameplay looks nice and tough too

-Map 09. Sector 355 and 358 could have their ceilings changed to FLAT23.

Map 09. Sectors 181 and 184 would look better with their floors raised by 32 units. (Linedef 1030 will need its frontside lower texture set to PLAT1 to cover the missing texture thing.) Which will fix this misaligned lift while still leaving the lift accessible from above. Just a thought.

The mid textures probably slipped my attention as I was testing it in GL ports. Thanks for reminding me of them. Also I might double check some alignments as well, DoomBuilder sometimes likes to mess with them.

For the second screenshot that texture has already been swapped for the plutonia railing texture. I have decided to use a very few doom1/2-like textures from plutonia/tnt.

I fixed most of the bugs mentioned here as well as some minor enhancements on levels. Currently I'm working on MAP20 and MAP15.

A shot of MAP20 WIP in the editor:

This is going to be a large map, kind of a UAC outpost at the gates of hell. Top part contains some trenches and bunkers, and a major wave of enemies, bottom unfinished part is going to be the UAC front observation post right at the throat of hell.

Also updated the first post, includes the actual M_DOOM gfx and a couple of screenies.

Map 10:
-Ceiling of sector 606 could be around 283 so the PIPES texture is not cut off.
-Thing 120 (revenant) should be facing east, in case the player comes from that direction.

MAP 11:
-Sector 496. Needs to be more obvious that you must run off the edge to reach sector 273. Perhaps some lights or something, maybe some railing showing a collapsed bridge. I had to open up DB to figure out where the blue key was in the end.
-Sector 517 needs a lift back up to sector 322
-Weird glitch around lsectors 489 and 490:
-Could raise the area around sector 278 to fix this offset:
-Linedef 2007 trigger should be made into a switch rather than a walkover line. Wold make it easier to figure out what to do, as well as add suspense. coz you just know something bad will happen if you hit that switch.
-I also felt you could add a bit more detail to the overhead rails for the transport cars.

MAP 12
-Must remove the blocking hanging corpses from sector 268. Got me killed when facing the manc in that room. There are many levels that are guilty of this, should have noted more of where they are.
-Felt that a few areas were a touch bland, mostly areas using the STARTAN2 texture.
-The area beyond the yellow key doors needs a little more health when you first go in there, as a reserve, as you are likely to get sniped from a lot of different directions. I was crawling around a lot of that area on 5 %health, reloading whenever I got sniped, which was often. Other than this, one of my favorite areas in the wad so far. Awesome finding my way around that area.
-Railings on either side of sectors 95 and 107 extend into the floor.
-Switch at sector 214 is very easy to miss. I wandered around for ages until I found this.
-Love the new sky on this level too, especially the sky window in sector 253

MAP 13
-Linedef 1396 needs to be impassable
-The area around sector 228 perhaps needs to be made more obvious that you must fall down here to continue.
-Linedef 797 could be joined to the walls so it cannot be bypassed.
-Sector 711. MIDGRATE extends into the ground.

Some of these are picky, but I'll mention them anyway, you can always ignore anything I have suggested.

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate the "beta testing", especially as you seem to play it in software zdoom, so you'll find a lot of glitches that is not visible in GL (since you showed me a few I pay a bit more attention to midtextures and offsets).

That Map11 area was kind of glitchy in Doom Builder, I had to manually assign sector references on some of the lines. It looked OK in GL, but looks like it glitches up in software. I'll take a look at what could be causing it.

I also kind of disliked the screwed up elevator offsets, but eventually I grew to accept them. Now as soon as it starts to bother someone else, I feel obliged to avoid them, and add them to my list of "mapping nuances".

Since both map15 and 20 are kind of big and are made from scratch, I think I'll do a demo update with them included + the fixes so far.

Glad it helps. I hope this project gets loads of attention, because, for me at least, this is the closest thing I think I have played that captures the 'spirit' of Doom2. The progression is really really good.

Playing map 14 today, and one thing I will mention, it is possible to get stuck behind the blue key door and not be able to get out again. You can run up over sector 1420, cross the barrier at sector 1378 and fall down into the area 'behind' the blue key door. If you don't have the blue key, (and I didn't) you will be stuck there and unable to get back out.

Update: work is progressing, if a bit slowly at times. Last week I was way too tired when I got home from work at weekdays, and only added a few new areas on the weekend, and some bugfixes and polishing of older maps.

By the way, I just noticed there's a screenshot thread, and you posted an SS of my map in it, many thanks! I think I'll post the recent map progresses there from now on.

For MAP15 I want to add a "Demon Museum" a.k.a. Doom 3 or one of the Kdizd levels (IIRC the fifth), but demons will either break loose or will be allowed to be killed somehow (as I don't want a map you cannot do 100%/100%/100% on)

MAP18 is going to be an E1M6/7 inspired map, MAP19 is E2M2/3/7 style

MAP19 will end with a gateway similar to MAP06, for MAP20 I'll want something so friggin' large that it's kind of it's own episode. The current version of MAP20 contains all weapons, from chainsaw to BFG, with SSG slightly delayed and BFG only in a secret

MAP22 is going to be a dark, slimey, green-based hell map with only a few fire caverns. I kinda want to do that Doom3 thing where you get put into a cage and lowered onto a platform, but I'll need to dig into some self referring sectors for that. My main inspiration is Doom3 hell areas for this map, except add more slime and green stuff besides the usual red.

MAP31 is kind of inspired by Speed of Doom's MAP31. What I want to do is to mix hellish themes with TEKWALL, COMPBLUE, COMP* and SKINTEK stuff.

I also have in mind a "cityscape in hell" style of map, which is going to be an upside down city.

MAP20 is done. It is arguably the hardest map on the set right now, with two cyberdemons and mutiple arch-vile ambushes. I returned to do MAP15, but unfortunately it is not done yet.

I also did quite a bit of overhauling jobs on the other maps (MAP02 got a nice bit of update, currently MAP03 is on the facelift queue, it needs it badly IMO - too much empty corridors here, I'm putting in some E2M7-esque detail.

One thing I had in mind was to maybe enter into something like a beta phase, and regularily update the progress on the maps, whenever there's a major change. Probably this will only happen once I'm done with the current things I'm working on (basically Demo 2.0 with 17 maps).

Also started to write the "story" section of the manual, I'll share what is done of it:

Story:
A retelling of Doom2's story, a journey from Earth to Hell.

You are called into service from your home late at night. Even though you retired as a combatant -
all those hellish invasions were enough for now - UAC seems to need your talents again. You grab your
pistol you keep at home, and realize what is going on again as you hear a familiar growl from the
corridor. Time to put that demon-slaying experience into action again...

- MAP01 - Apartments
You awake in the middle of the night as a desperate UAC message gets through on your communication devices.
UAC installed plenty of hardware in your home for a situation just like this. You head out to the infested
streets to reach the nearest UAC installation.

Author's Notes: This is a quite old map, but it looked decent without much overhauling needed. It was started
with an old DOS editor, and finished in DoomBuilder 2. It was kind of a shot at a "scary city map".

- MAP02 - Canals
Your path leads you through the treacherous canals, now overrun with undead and demons. Beware of the water
below, industrial waste is known to be flushed into it. That UAC base is nearby, hopefully it is able to hold
the invasion and you can meet some reinforcements there.

- MAP03 - Test Chamber
Arriving at the base you only find a few wandering zombies. No guards outside, dead crew inside. Looks like
no reinforcements again. The place was invaded from the inside. You wonder what's beyond those metal detectors
you were never admitted past...

A.N.: I made this a bit later now with Doom Builder, in fact if I recall correctly this was my first Doom Builder
map. The style was an absolute mish-mash, it has been re-done in a greyish UAC base style, but it remains varied
enough.

- MAP04 - Processing Plant
The only way out was to go deeper into an industrial plant. This place is devoid of any light and likely infested
with hellspawn. Green radioactive waste is being poured inside the pipes here. You hope it leads somewhere.

A.N.: This map is inspired by Doom3's waste processing maps, in fact the Mancubus Room is almost directly taken
from there. Contains a "hell-trip", where you get teleported to a small hellish section (only 1 player in Co-op).
I barely even touched this when re-polishing the maps, it was quite OK to begin with.

- MAP05 - Underground
You are surprised to see the UAC having secret enterances in the underground railway system. Nevertheless you
learn from computers that a so-called Gateway (a high-powered teleporter) is located inside. You need to locate
the key that unlocks the path leading to it. You suspect it might have gotten lost somewhere in the underground
system during the invasion.

A.N.: An old subway themed map, extensively polished up, into almost an entirely new map. The style is
in-line withMAP01 and MAP02. The station and railway parts are only slightly updated, as is the park, but
the rest is almost brand new. Contains city vistas that were put in during the re-polishing phase.

- MAP06 - Gateway Lab
You descend through the eerie layers of infested ooze into what you guess is a highly secret UAC facility.
It seems to be well sealed and almost empty, but you suspect a nasty ambush.

A.N.: This map was pretty small and non-interesting, so it was overhauled HEAVILY. I took inspiration from E2M4.
The Ammo Storage and the Med Bay remained in. In fact originally the map was less linear (you could go both left
and right on the slimey circle corridor), but I am very satisfied with the end result.

- MAP07 - Woods
You enter into the swirling madness of the Gateway, but you hear a hellish sound while inside. Seems like most of
your equipment ended up being someplace else, so you'll have to do with the pistol you found lying on a dead body.
According to the nearby computers you are far away from your home city, underneath a small patch of forest. The
map shows several interconnecting UAC facilities nearby. You suspect they might be the source of the invasion.

A.N.: A forest map. Inspired by Shadow Warrior's forest map. The start area is a newly added Quake-ish/E2-ish
style underground base. The gameplay of this map was quite different from how it is now. It was not intended to
be a MAP07, so the 666 and 667 features were not in originally.

- MAP08 - Military Depot
You spot the UAC base outside the woods. It seems to be locked down tightly and guarded by hellspawn, but you saw
an alternate entry: it has a sewage drain on the side. In fact that drain can lead you closer to the major UAC
base you saw on the map. Better clear this place out quick, and unlock the other end of that drain pipe.

A.N.: I almost threw this map away deeming it as not redeemable. It needed a style overhaul very badly. In the end
I kept it as it has some interesting areas. This is directly connected to both the last and the next map.

- MAP09 - Disposal Facility
Rivers of toxic waste flow across the landscape, courtesy of the UAC's waste management program. Those experiments
must require an awful lot of the gooey material. You must navigate the hazardous environment of the facility to
locate the way out. Be careful, the hellspawn seems to have something in store for you.

A.N.: A Duke Nukem-esque map (think E1L4 and E1L5), this one also contains a "hell-trip". In fact you are
required to take that as it is the only way to get inside the red key door. The flow of the map was slightly
updated to contain more self-explanatory switches, since even when I replayed it after a while got lost.

- MAP10 - Cistern
Seems like the only way through the area is to go down to the cistern of the nearby UAC water treatment plant.
The place is crawling with monsters, but you intend to flush them out.

A.N.: One of the first maps where I started to get the importance of trim-textures and styling. It turned out
good enough, I only needed to replace a few ugly parts. A bit of a switch hunt map, although unreasonable
"switch opens something on the other end of the map" was reduced to as little as possible.

- MAP11 - Canyon
A great divide lays before you. A smaller UAC complex must be crossed in order to get to the dam. Unfortunately
the road that leads to the main UAC base seems to be destroyed, so you'll have to climb your way throgh the
cliffs. Beware of the great slime river, it is deadly and inescapable.

A.N.: A partly Half-Life inspired map. It was a bit large and empty, so quite a bit of updating was needed to get
it into shape. The dam also received a facelift, as well as the compound before it.

- MAP12 - Power Station
You made it to the UAC base. This part seems to be a power station, you'll probably need to bring it on-line to
go any deeper. You smell the foul stench of demon infestation lingering in the air, so you prepare for a thorough
cleansing. Structural damage seems to be minimal on this part, but you wonder about the deeper sectors.

A.N.: A clear continuation of MAP12, and a sort of "prequel" to MAP13. From here on the demonic corruption fusing
with the techbase becomes apparent. The place becomes a bit brighter once you power up the reactor. This map was
also plagued by the "what did this switch do" problem, hopefully now it is much clearer.

- MAP13 - Corruption
The stench of corruption becomes ever more apparent here. Your train seems to be stopped by some hellish growth
on the rail, so you need to proceed on foot. The base seems quiet, but you know they are waiting. You also learn
that this sector contains experimental weapons, just the thing you need if you are going to face more hellspawn.

A.N.: The last of the "Half-Life Train" maps, this one contains some heavy infestation and a hellish part as well.
You also get your hands on the BFG. This map was the unfinished end of the Canyon-Power Station line. It was
originally called "InfeStation", but I dropped the name as it was also used in a SkullTag invasion map.

- MAP14 - Death District
You are unsure whether you found the source of the demons or just a simple invasion teleporter left around by them.
You seem to emerge in a downtown area. The streets are dominated by infested military and spiders, but you are
ever ready should a major wave of hellspawn head this way. A large UAC building also seems to be nearby, might be
worth checking it out.

A.N.: A large cityscape map, left unfinished. Originally it was intended to be a co-op map. The city itself looked
decent, so not much alteration was needed to it, only expansion. It turned out to be a quite large map with a
relatively large number of monsters. You can litter the streets with corpses. Has an industrial area and the
UAC techbase-building.

- MAP20 - Borderworld
You took the second gateway and ended up in some unknown place. It looks like the base was built by the UAC, but
Hell's powers have twisted it to a great extent. You learn, that this place is the frontier, where UAC tried to
take the fight to Hell, without success it seems. This is the borderworld between Hell and our dimension, a
failed expedition pioneered by the UAC's forces. Now you'll have to batter through the frontline of the
hellspawn and finish what UAC could not: reach the portal to Hell itself.

A.N.: A quite large and hard map. Main inspiration comes from The Ultimate Torment and Torture's second to
last map. Has a trench action part which was something I wanted to try.

- MAP21 - The Gate of Hell
This is it. Hell. You stand before the very gates of it. Your equipment has gone missing again, good thing you
see some supply crates nearby. The place looks deserted, but you know that hell never leaves it's doorstep unguarded.

A.N.: A quick map with a decent ambush scene. Inspired by Doom3's hell map as well as Quake3's Hell's Gate map.

Looking at all those finished maps so far, I'm surprised that there isn't a single map among them that has less than a hundred enemies yet. Then again, I know that the ones with the larger monster counts mean that (despite not being slaughtermap territory), will take a while to complete to say the least.

I'm trying to border the difficulty between the classic games and the slaughter wads. Kinda like Alien Vendetta, although some maps there are definitely slaughter category. Probably some later hell levels will also be quite slaughtery for my wad as well.

Currently MAP14 is the closest to a slaughter type gameplay, but I usually mix monster types so you can make infightings in places like that.

I'm also considering putting some "breather" maps in there. For example MAP15 can be considered one, despite the numerous AV encounters, because it has plenty of health and ammo.

Probably the next batch will be MAP23 (will be an improved of a map made by me a very long time ago - I already started it, so if anyone finds a bug and I update, the incomplete MAP23 will also be there) and MAP16 (the idea/theme of this map is getting ever clearer).

I kind of slacked with this beta style update thing, but I still did some mapping. MAP23 and 24 are done, 16 is on 90% and 18 is on 35-40%. Let me know if anyone would be interested in WIP maps or more frequent updates, or if I should just complete the thing first and then release a beta.

EDIT:
Some appetizer screenshots:

MAP18, some fun with StarX

MAP16, early shot

MAP16, same area, different angle, finished scenery

MAP16, ouside the city walls

MAP16, inside the city walls
(screenshots taken with GZDoom, using custom brightmaps)